(Associated Press via NewsEdge) The thumping pop music and blaring lights at Seoul's Dongdaemun market keep going all night long as shoppers swarm around merchants hawking the latest trendy fashions at rock-bottom prices.
South Korea's Gmarket seems to have captured the energy of that raw commerce and made a home for it on the Internet, creating a Web site that has quickly become a top online destination in this computer-savvy nation. It's going head-to-head with eBay's Korean subsidiary.
Gmarket has drawn the interest of US-based Yahoo which recently bought a 9% stake.
It went public in June, offering shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and is pondering future expansion, with an eye to entering Japan next year and later moving into China and the US.
The company, which doesn't stock inventory, offers online storefronts and a variety of tools to make it easier for sellers to set up shop and manage inventory. Gmarket handles payments, earning its revenue from transaction fees that vary depending on the product.
For consumers, it offers the variety of a shopping mall, said Gmarket CEO Ku Young-bae.
The value of all the merchandise traded on Gmarket's site in the second quarter of this year was 543.8 billion won ($567 million), an increase of 163% from the same period in 2005.
The site has more than 9.2 million registered users in a country of 48 million people, with the most active being females in their 20s and 30s.
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